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SALINAS CALIFORNIAN June 1, 2009
UFW
co-founder Dolores Huerta shares stories of union struggles in
Salinas Behind every good man there is a good woman, said Salinas City Councilman Sergio Sanchez as he introduced Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union. Huerta, 79, who along with Cesar Chavez founded the UFW in the 1960s, stood in front of about 150 people at the Cesar Chavez Library on Sunday and spoke about the early days of the union and its struggles. "There are a million stories out there," said Huerta, who recalled everything from Chavez's imprisonment at the Salinas jail, organizing farmworkers, negotiating contracts with growers and the violence of that time. The event was the latest installment of Salinas Stories, a series of panels and talks aimed at bringing to life key periods of Salinas-area history. Sunday's event explored the unionization struggles from 1960 to 1985. It included a panel discussion of four people, each with a different perspective of that era. "We were fighting for our lives," Huerta said, recalling a violent era that included her own kidnapping when she was kept in an office in Salinas and assaulted by a group formed to intimidate UFW workers. Huerta and Chavez launched the National Farm Workers Association in 1962 to lobby for better working conditions and employee benefits for field workers. Huerta said the union worked to get rest periods for workers, benefits, bathrooms for both men and women, being able to work at a reasonable pace and a lunch hour. But even today, Huerta said, the union's work is not finished. "There's still so much work to be done," she said, adding that the wages of farmworkers, at minimum wage, have remained stagnant over the years. Before Huerta took center stage at the event, a panel, assembled with people personally involved in the events of that era, shared their stories. The panelists were Pete Maturino, who was a foreman at Bud of California before working for the Teamsters union in 1972; Mike Payne, who was a representative at Bruce Church Co. during contract negotiations with the UFW; Roberto Garcia, a foreman for Mann Packing in 1970 before joining the farmworkers movement; and Teresa Serrano, who worked under UFW contract in the grape industry. Serrano recalled the working conditions before the union came along. "It was very hard," she said in Spanish. Serrano said growers would provide five gallons of water for hundreds of people working in the fields while keeping workers constantly bent down when harvesting produce that stretched for miles. "If you stand up, you were out of the job [the next day]," Serrano said. Payne, who shared the growers' perspective during that era, agreed the working conditions for farmworkers were terrible. Payne recalled visiting a farmworker in a labor camp whose living situation was "so horrible, I wouldn't have allowed my chickens to live in it." But Payne shared the reason why many growers were "anti-union." "The UFW scared us," he said, adding that by the early 1970s it was obvious to the growers that Chavez was working in line with future California Gov. Jerry Brown and other liberal Democrats. Salinas resident Leonel Rogel, 41, brought two of his kids to Sunday's event. "It's important for them to respect and learn about the sacrifice the farmworkers made," he said. The event brought the farmworkers' unionization struggles to life to Rogel's 16-year-old daughter, Analey, who has been taking a Chicano studies class at Alvarez High School in Salinas. "I learned so many things," she said. "It's great to hear their first-hand experience."
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